Excavation

It was on the 10th of March that things first started to get really fucked up. That was the day Briggs shot Meyer in the face, put a bullet clean through his left eye and out the back of his skull, scattering his brains all over the far wall in storage and onto the cold concrete floor.

“He’s dead,” Fritz, the compound doctor had said, bringing his hand back up from the body’s neck. I’d watched him push the eyes closed and his own followed halfway. He’d looked so tired all of a sudden. I saw the blood stain his fingertips.

“He… he attacked me…” Briggs had stammered. “He was crazy. Raving. He came after me! Tried to bite me in the neck. Claw my eyes out. I had to kill him!”

And you know the crazy thing? Everyone believed Briggs. Because of what we found in the tomb.

“It got into him,” he said, eyes wild, hands shaking violently. “You all saw it when we pulled that thing open. That cloud of dust right into his face, those things that flew out – how could anything survive down there for thousands of years, let alone with the cold? There was something down in there, something evil. It got into Meyer when he opened the lid. And now it’s only a matter of time now before it gets into all of us.”

That was three days ago. But let me tell you something – I’m not a superstitious man. They all died, at each others’ hands or Briggs’, because of what they thought they saw. But nothing got into anyone. There was no evil spirit, or virus, or alien life form down in bottom of that tomb. There’s only us here. Us and two thousand miles of God-forsaken frozen rock.

It’s just him and me now. My breathing is heavy. Blood trickles down the side of my face from where the bullet grazed me. I lean back against the wall, clutching the pistol tight with sweaty hands. One shot left. I hear Briggs’ voice echo down the long steel corridor: